His Nasty Virgin

JESSE

Lance was still woozy, shaking off the last of the sleep aid. The pot of tea Vivian had brewed for him sat

forgotten on the coffee table, half-empty.

“She could have killed me,” Lance grumbled. “What if I overdosed?”

I glanced toward the kitchen, noting the scrap piece of paper hastily shoved beneath the toaster. It was covered in numbers and equations. She’d done the math, I realized, because, of course, she did. Vivian was too smart to just dump a bunch of medication into a man’s tea. She took the time to figure out the proper dosage, accounting for every milligram of diphenhydramine.

If I weren’t so worried about her wellbeing, I would have been impressed.

“How did she even get her hands on the stuff?” I asked him.

Lance rubbed at his eyes and groaned. “She had me order her some things. Said she was having cravings. Ice cream, sliced banana peppers, chamomile tea, the damn sleep aids… I didn’t think twice because she’d been having trouble sleeping since she got here.”

“Ice cream and banana peppers?” I echoed, curious.

“Did she eat them separately, or at the same time?” “Does it matter?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. That particular combination of foods struck me as odd. When Melissa was pregnant with Wally, she’d craved odd combinations of foods as well. I shook the thought from my head. I needed to focus.

“You said she took your keys?” I asked him. Finding Vivian before she could get herself into trouble was my priority here, not dwelling on her strange eating habits.

Lance nodded. “Yeah. She must have swiped them straight from my pocket.”

“Good. All the company cars are fitted with onboard tracking in case of theft. I’ll call Devin and have him pull the vehicle up in the system. Should lead us right to her.”

“Devin again,” Lance mumbled. “Isn’t it his day off today? He probably won’t take too kindly to being disturbed.”

I frowned. “Again? What do you mean again?”

“Miss Jones asked me for his phone number.”

“Did she say what for?”

Lance shrugged. “Something about her laptop not working. I didn’t think it was a security risk to give her the number. He’s one of ours, after all.”

The gears inside my skull were working in overdrive. What business did Vivian have calling my brother? What kind of trouble was she up to?

“Stay here and rest,” I ordered.

Lance lay down on the couch, rubbing at his temples. “Trust me. I don’t think I’m going anywhere for a while.”

I put my brother on speaker the second I got behind the wheel.

He answered grumpily. “It’s Sunday. Even God took a day off, Jesse.”

“I have a missing vehicle,” I said. “I need you to track it down for me.”

“Am I being paid overtime?”

“I’ll pay you with a swift kick in the ass, how about that?”

“Fine, fine. Whose car got swiped? Pinkerton? I bet it was Pinkerton. Airhead always forgets where he put his keys.”

“It’s Lance’s. Vivian stole his keys while he was, uh… incapacitated.”

“Vivian?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“She called me earlier. Asked me to decrypt some files for her. She’s bossy when she wants to be.”

“Files? What-” Everything clicked into place. When she went back to Blue Cloud Financial, she must have downloaded the files she needed to incriminate the cartel. “You should have told me,” I snapped at him. “She could be in danger!”

“I didn’t realize, alright? She didn’t exactly tell me the whole story.”

“Shit. Do you have a location yet?”

“Still loading.”

“I thought you said the trackers we installed were top of the line.”

“They are. Excuse me if GPS technology needs a second to orient itself.”

“Devin, I swear to God-”

“I got it, I got it. The car’s parked on the corner of Hastings and Milden. Right in front of El Ronso, a Columbian restaurant.”

I sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth as I floored it, slamming on the gas and shoving my way into traffic. I earned several loud honks and a less-than-polite gesture from a few of the cars behind me. I didn’t care. Vivian was in danger.

“Hastings and Milden…” I grumbled. “That’s smack in the middle of the Azure Cartel’s territory. What the fuck was she thinking?”

“Ooh, shit,” Devin piped up.

“What? What is it?”

“I ran those files she gave me through a program I wrote. It just finished loading.”

“And?”

“Jesus. She’s got years’ worth of financial records that link the Azure Cartel directly to Blue Cloud Financial. It looks like they’ve been investing on the cartel’s behalf and Blue Cloud’s been cleaning their money. Is this the reason she was placed in your care in the first place?”

I sped straight through a red light, nearly clipping a car through the intersection. “Devin, send the files to the police and call for backup to my location.”

“You’re not going to charge in, are you-”

“I’m charging in.”

“Jesse, don’t be stupid. Wait for backup to arrive.”

“Then you’d better call them before I get there.”

I ended the call and whipped around a corner, tires screeching in protest. I silently cursed the congested Chicago traffic. Every second I spent trapped behind the beat-up minivan full of kids on their way to soccer practice, the greater the chance that something could happen to Vivian.

She was the only thought that occupied my mind as I weaved in and out of traffic. What on Earth had she been thinking, venturing out all alone? Why would she drug Lance and head straight into cartel territory? Did someone contact her, and give her instructions on where to meet them? If they knew she had copies of the cartel’s transactions, her life was in grave danger.

I prayed I wasn’t too late.

I ran another red light. This time, the sound of police sirens and the flash of red, white, and blue lights reflected off my rearview mirror. The police car gave chase. Their siren wailed twice, signaling for me to pull over, but I didn’t. This was perfect. They were just going to have to follow me to the restaurant. They would serve as my backup. They just didn’t know it yet. With any luck, they’d call for reinforcements.

I was going to roll up to this place with my army. If any cartel members were in the area, they’d hopefully have the good sense to leave before things got ugly.

Don’t worry, angel. I’m coming.